Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too night.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Michael Brown joins me here, the former FEMA director of talk.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Show host Michael Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Brownie, no, Brownie, You're doing a heck of a job.
The Weekend with Michael Brown broadcasting live from Denver, Colorado.
It's the Beacon with Michael Brown. Happy to have you
joining me. The prog in the program today. Rules of
engagement are pretty easy. You're gonna send me a text message.
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(00:25):
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It's at Michael Brown USA, at Michael Brown USA. When
I was undergraduate school and I was I took a
double major in political science and public administration. One of
(00:48):
my political science professors taught a course called terrorism. That
was it just terrorism, and it was it was. It
was a one semester course. It was a one thousand
level course. And I remember throughout the study of the
course of course, you got to remember this is back
(01:08):
in the dark ages, So most of the course work
and the textbook were focused on foreign actors, foreign events
of terrorism, mainly happening in Africa or the Middle East,
sometimes Southeast Asia. And I remember throughout the entire length
(01:33):
of the course thinking, what would we do as a
nation if acts of terrorism ever came to this country?
What kind of reaction would we have? What would Congress do,
what would whoever the president might be at that time,
what would they do? And what would that ultimately lead to.
(02:00):
Let's go back in time. Let's go back in time
just thirty years ago, thirty years ago today, April nineteen,
nineteen ninety five. I remember distinctly where I was. I
was in San Diego, California. I'd had a meeting the
night before. I was staying in a Marriott somewhere on
(02:20):
the water, and I had gotten up that morning and
was going downstairs to have breakfast, and as many hotels
to this day still do. In fact, I think it's
even more prominent now. You walk down a hallway, you're walking,
you know, through a lobby or wherever, and there are
television monitors up. And the television monitors might be, you know,
(02:43):
tuned to the weather channel or to a local channel,
might be tuned to C and In or whatever. Now
I remember walking by and looking up at the television
monitors and seeing this billowing of smoke from I did
a double take, and I looked and I went, oh,
that's downtown Oklahoma City. So I stopped and I watched
(03:05):
the coverage for a moment, and at first I thought,
and I don't remember, it's thirty years ago, but I
don't know whether someone was reporting this, or whether i'd
seen something on the video that was showing the live
coverage that was on at the time, because by that
time in the morning, West Coast, let's say I was
(03:26):
getting up at you know, I was going down to
breakfast at eight am. That means it would be almost
ten am, so the bombing was almost an hour old.
And so I don't know whether it was reporting or
it was old scenes or what it was. But I
remember thinking, Oh, someone's bomb the IRS building there used
(03:47):
to be. I don't know whether there still is, and
I don't remember it was on Broadway or one of
the other streets, one of the north South Archeries in
downtown Oclaoma City, but one of those streets had an
IRS building on it, and I thought, Oh, somebody's bomb
the IRS building. And I don't mean this flippantly, but
I thought to myself, well, I'm not surprised in my
(04:08):
bomb the Irs building. You know, there's some nut job
out there that's pissed off about his taxes. And I stopped.
And I don't know why, but I was mesmerized, primarily
because I grew up in Oklahoma and I used to
practice law in Oklahoma. And then I realized, Oh, it's
(04:29):
the Alfred P. Murrah Building, which is a federal building
that's adjacent to the Federal District Courthouse. And what caught
my attention was, oh, it's the Murrah Building. Because when
I would have any business in the Federal District Courthouse
the Western District of Oklahoma, located in downtown Oklahoma City,
(04:50):
there were when you would drive into the parking garage
of the Mura Building there was a row of free
public parking spaces. And so, as a lawyer that you know,
didn't have a lot of money trying to watch his
p's and q's on expenses, thought well, look I can
park here. I think the limit was four hours or something.
So if I was if all I was doing was
(05:11):
I had a maybe I had a hearing on a
motion or I had to file some documents or something.
I would park in that free parking spot in the
Murrah Building and then take a short tunnel just underneath
right across to the Federal Courthouse and go up the
elevators of the courthouse, go do my business, do whatever
it was. Come back and you know, pull out of
the Murror Building and you know, get back on the
(05:33):
expressway and head back to wherever I was going to
head to. And I thought, huh, that's interesting because the
Murror Building contains the ATF Department of Agriculture. I'll tell
you why. I remember the Department of Vague in particular,
the Department of Agriculture, the ATF. You know, they're just
(05:55):
all sorts of office buildings. Oklahoma City was not a
regional office. Like you know, FEMA has these ten distinct
regions around the country, and there is a regional headquarters
in which because of the FEMA map and the THEEMA
different regions, most other federal agencies locate in those regional headquarters.
(06:22):
So like Dallas is the regional headquarter for UH, I
think it's Region eight. I forget the region number. But
then you'll have satellite offices in major cities around the
state and in that region. And that was true for
Oklahoma City, just like you'd have an IRS building, you
(06:42):
had Department of Agon, you had ATF and you had
others in the Alfred P. Mura building. And the reason
that I kind of stopped and was mesmerized because when
they started showing the photos of the damage inflicted by
this what turned out to be a rider truck car bomb,
(07:04):
one of my Sunday school well, my my Sunday school
teacher when I was in grade school worked for the
Department of Bag in that building, and my sister in
law worked for an oil and gas company about a
block and half away, And so I remember taking my mobile,
(07:26):
you know, my big gass mobile phone that we had,
and trying to call uh. Her name is Joey, And
I remember trying to call Joey to see if I
could get a hold of Joey see what was going on.
And obviously, like you learn over time that when these
incidents occur, you really can't get a hold of anybody
(07:46):
because the cell phone towers are either jammed and they're overloaded,
or they're destroyed and they're inoperative, or whatever it might be.
But I remember I couldn't get through, and it was
my my first personal taste of an act of terrorism.
And little did I realize that something that had happened
(08:11):
a couple of years before, and then this act on
April nineteen, nineteen ninety five, and then what would happen
later on in two thousand and one, would come to
be an incredibly major part of my life. So for
a few moments this morning, or whenever you're listening, I
(08:34):
want to take a few moments just to recall a
few things that happened on April nineteen, nineteen ninety five
in downtown Oklahoma City. It's the Weekend with Michael Brown.
Text the word Micaro Michael to three three Wednesday, will
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Hangtyp I'll be right back. Hey, welcome back to the
(08:59):
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Michael Brown. So back to Oklahoma City, April nineteen, nineteen
ninety five, two years after the first World Trade Center bombing,
which we'll get to in amendment. But the coverage was
(09:41):
fairly standard.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
I'm Tammy pay the TV and I Newsuan. If you
are anywhere downtown, you probably heard it and felt it.
An explosion of some kind downtown Oklahoma City. Take a
look at this picture. This is our tower cam shot,
a plume of smoke rising in the air. I was
on the phone with that one of the fire chiefs,
John Hanson, just moments ago. We were talking. He said, Wow,
(10:04):
there's been some kind of explosion in downtown Oklahoma City.
The minute he said that, we felt what I guess
is some type of aftershock, maybe a second explosion that
we felt all the way here at Wiltshire and Kelly
at news line nine. This is a live picture right
now downtown at Oklahoma City. Robin and you got some
more information saying that it was near the YMCA and
(10:26):
apparently there.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Are numerous injuries.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
That initial reports numerous injuries. These are initial reports. Coming
into news Line nine, I get a live picture tower
cam downtown Oklahoma City. It is our understanding the explosion
was near the YMCA. Now we're going to stay with
you here for a few moments, maybe from Martha City Hall,
(10:49):
also near the Federal Court Building. We're trying to give
you some idea of where the explosion took place.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
He knows. It's really no different than what happens today,
the first initial reports. No one really knows what's happened.
Yet it's now wall toa wall coverage. It could have
been a natural gas explosion. In fact, at some point
there was a speculation that may have been a natural
gas explosion. But it becomes walla wall coverage because you
(11:18):
have a huge pluma smoke coming from a downtown central
business district. Nobody knows what's going on, And of course
you know that in the minds of all the news
people and of course the first responders who are already
on the scene, that something really horrible has happened. We
just don't realize how horrible it is. We just don't realize.
(11:43):
Even as I sat in San Diego watching the news
coverage on one of the cable channels, in a Marriott
Hotel that I didn't fully comprehend everything that had happened
at that point.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
You have family and friends if you work in downtown
Oklahoma City. This is downtown Oklahoma City, near at the
Federal Court Building, also near the YMCA. This is a
live picture tower CAM twenty south half to downtown Oklahoma City.
And if you're just joining us again house speaking with
John Hanson, it was incredible. He said there has been
(12:17):
some kind of explosion in downtown Oklahoma City. He had
no details of what. You can imagine how quick he hung.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
The bombing happened around nine oh two am. This particular
live coverage that you're hearing the archive of is at
nine oh six thirty four am, so four minutes after
the bombing. They've gone wall to wall coverage and no
one yet really fully understands what's taking place.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
As soon as he hung up, we felt here at
news Line nine the building shake and we heard a
very loud explosion. We don't know if it's gas, We
don't know what it is. We do know there's a
plymouth smoke to the air, and we're going to stay
with you here to talk you through this as we
get information on injuries and exactly where this explosion took place.
(13:13):
Here's some more information we're getting. The explosion was so powerful,
gas or glass was blown out of buildings in a
free block area. Now you can imagine what the scanners
sound like here. You can probably hear them. Emergency vehicles
of every kind are responding. It was felt as far
away as an Edmund. You know, this is a live
(13:35):
picture tower can in downtown Oklahoma City, del City, del
City felt, Edmund felt it.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
And again here at news you hear the reporters in
the background trying to gather information to try to let
people know what's going on. And as you watch the video,
as it's true, whenever these things happen, people are still
driving up in the freeways. There are obviously lots of
helicopters in the sky. You can see planes in the
(14:06):
background that are landing out at Will Rogers International Airport.
So you see that life goes on while everyone else
is trying to focus on what happened in that very
small area of downtown Oklahoma City. I mean, it affected
virtually a very wide area in downtown, but the bombing
(14:31):
itself half a block, just half a block, and it's
one of the first indications that we have that the
country's going to change, that things are going to be different,
and that suddenly what we take to be granted that
(14:51):
acts of terrorism are something that occur somewhere else that
don't affect us, are now going to affect us and
affect us in ways we can't even possibly imagine. In
my looking through to try to find just kind of
relevant sound bites about the bombing, I ran across this.
(15:17):
The voice should be familiar to you. It's then Congressman
Chuck Schumer now Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer from New York.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
By Terrorism bill making lethal terrorism a crime punishable by death,
it would.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Make it a lot easier to deport non citizens who
are here and possibly doing terroristic acts. And finally, it
would not allow them to come here and raise money
for terroristic purposes.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
It didn't take long.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Wow, they're Senator Schumer talking about an act of terrorism
and claiming that, you know, his legislation would prevent people
from I'm coming to this country illegally in order to
raise money to engage in acts of terrorism, and that
those who are here should be deported, shouldn't be around
(16:13):
do you think Chuck Schumer would say that today, because
today we have Congressmen and senators, well, in particular, we
have a US Senator from Maryland that's actually traveling to
l Salvador to sit down with a member of MS thirteen,
a gang that you may not define it as domestic
(16:35):
terrorism in the sense that it's for it, because it's
not for a political purpose. Although I think that when
you're engaged in a national conspiracy, an organizational conspiracy, to
engage in criminal activity, to engage in some of the
most brutal criminal acts, you can possibly imagine that that's
(16:58):
inflicting terror upon those victims and inflicting terror upon those
communities in which MS thirteen operates, which was originally started
in well, started in El Salvador, but originally landed in
Los Angeles, but ironically operates also predominantly in Maryland, where
(17:20):
Senator Van Holland is from. So that's his constituency, that's
who he's going to see.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
So this whole.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Terrorism thing has turned the world upside down inside out,
and in this country, despite the incredible loss of life
that we had on in nineteen ninety three in the
World Trade Center bombing, that we had in nineteen ninety
five in the Alfred P. Murra bombing, and that we
had in the attacks of September eleventh, two thousand and one.
(17:57):
We don't take or at least some people don't take
you illegal immigration seriously. I find that astonishing. It's a
Weekend with Michael Brown. Text the word Michael, Michael the
three three, one zero three. I'll be right back tonight.
(18:18):
Michael Brown joins me here.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
The former FEMA director of talk show host Michael Brown. Brownie, no, Brownie,
You're doing a heck of a job the Weekend with
Michael Brown.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Hey, welcome back to the Weekend with Michael Brown. Glad
to have you with me. I appreciate you tuning in.
By the way, Happy Easter everyone, Hope everyone has a
wonderful Easter. So we're talking about the Alfred P. Murrah bombing,
how that had a personal effect on me, having been
(18:47):
in that building hundreds, probably not thousands of times, and
having lost a dear friend in that building. Well, let's
back up. Let's go to February twenty six, nineteen ninety three,
because we have to remember this history to understand how
we've gotten to where we are today. On February twenty sixth,
(19:10):
nineteen ninety three, a van loaded with I think more
than one thousand pounds of a urea nitrate bomb similar
to the bomb used by Timothy McVeigh headed for downtown Manhattan,
and the destination for those bombers Romsey Yusef and his
(19:32):
group of terrorists was the World Trade Center and their
mission on that day was to destroy the twin towers.
They parked a level B to the garage below the towers,
lit the bomb's fuse, and escaped in a getaway car,
and at twelve eighteen PM on that cold day in February,
(19:54):
the bomb detonated. The explosion left a whole about one
hundred and fifty feet wide several stories deep underneath the
North Tower. People on the top of the towers and
in surrounding buildings could feel the force of the explosions.
Sounds almost exactly like what we had thought we witnessed
just two years later, one foreign, one domestic with the
(20:18):
menace of that bombing. In February of nineteen ninety three,
the FBIS joined Terrorism Task Force when they're investigators suspected
acts of terrorism, and two days after the attack, investigators
recovered several vehicle fragments from the parking garage of WTC,
(20:39):
and unlike the other fragments that they found, those pieces
indicated that they were from a vehicle that had exploded outward.
So clearly Carbamb you may have recalled in that SoundBite
that I was playing in the last segment from the
live coverage in downtown Oklahoma City, speculation quickly turned to
(21:00):
another car bomb because of an eight foot crater. And
then when you see when they were finally able to
get helicopters close enough through the smoke, you could see
that the front one third of the building, in kind
of a concave shape, had also been blown away, and
then the remaining parts of the building interior began to collapse.
(21:23):
And don't forget all those children that were killed. They
were in the daycare center on the first floor. If
anybody ever deserved the death penalty, it was Timothy McVeigh.
My opinion is Terry Nichols deserved it also as his partner.
But I think he's still alive down in Supermax here
(21:45):
in Colorado. McVeigh, he's gone on to meet us. Maker.
If you ever have a chance to get a clambas
City and you have a chance to visit the National
Memorial on the grounds of where the Murrah buildings stood
in downtown Oklamas City, I highly recommend that you do that,
(22:06):
And much like I recommend people watch or see the
monuments in Washington at night, I highly recommend that you
go to the National Memorial in downtown Oclaomas City at night.
You'll see the rows of chairs, nine rows representing the
nine floors of the building, and the chairs from the
(22:33):
tallest adult size all the way down to tiny, tiny
little chairs on the front row representing the murdered children,
all lit by a light underneath that glows on the chairs,
(22:54):
and of course the memorial tree, the living tree that's
still there that survived the bomb. It's worth it's worth
a trip, but it's also worth your time reflecting, and
it's worth your time if you ever make it to
to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, or you ever have a chance to
(23:18):
go to the World Trade Center Memorial in Lower Manhattan.
Is to reflect on how these incidents of terrorism have
fundamentally altered this country and turned us virtually into a
security state. As my local audience knows, I was in
(23:39):
Chicago for a couple of days this week, and of
course I have my usual encounter with TSA, although I
didn't you know, no no problems this time. You know,
I was a good boy. I went the extra mile
to make sure that nothing was going to beep, and
I also used clear. I used clear. Plus I have
TSA PreCheck. But think about just think about that. So
(24:05):
here is a citizen of the United States of America,
a law abiding citizen that, through two organizations, a private
and a governmental organization, go through to get cleared to
fly on an airplane. And the purpose is to make
(24:28):
certain that I don't carry anything on board to hijack
the plane, or to fly it into a tower, or
fly it into the ground. And so we see this,
these just throngs of people, which I'm always fascinated by,
because if Terris really wanted to do mass murder, although
(24:49):
it would not be it, well, maybe in some ways
it would be as dramatic as a plane crashing into
a tower. Denver International Airport is the third busiest airport
in the country. It's the sixth busiest airport in the world,
and on busy days, the crowds, the thousands of people
(25:10):
that are lined up to go through magnetometers, X rays,
body scanners, everything you can imagine, taking their shoes off,
taking their belts off, taking their watches off, throwing their
hands up in the air as if they're being searched,
you know, because they're they're criminals of some sort going
through so simply so they can exercise their First Amendment
right of association by traveling to wherever they're going for
(25:33):
a business meeting or see Grandma, or to see whatever
it is, we have subjected ourselves to a security state
I go, you know, I don't. Actually I pay for
my global entry because I travel internationally, so I want
to be able to skip the all of the customs
(25:54):
and border patrol interrogations and entry. So I pay for
global entry, which requires as an in person interview, providing
all the documentation about who I am, which gives me
automatically tsa pre check. And I also use clear of
a private company that also does biometrics and pre screening
(26:14):
and everything else, so that I can expedite, simply expedite
my way through security, and people just accept it. Why
do we do that? Well, because many people just like we.
I often talk about how we abdicate our compassion to
(26:36):
the government. Oh there's somebody homeless, Well, we want the
government to take care of that. Oh there's somebody hungry,
we want the government to take care of that. Oh
there's somebody who's poor, we want the government to take
care of that. Well, in the same vein, Oh here's
a danger. And the danger at one time was somebody
(26:57):
might take a plane, and well we always somebody might
take a plane in highjacket and fly to Havana and
try to collect some sort of ransom and then disappear.
Of course, Fidel Castro at the time would take the
money and then, you know, throw the other person in prison,
and so Castro made some money, he has a prisoner,
and people get their plane back and life goes on.
(27:21):
But we couldn't imagine that somebody could fly a plane
into a tower, and we couldn't imagine that the World
Trade Center might be a target, and we couldn't imagine
that somebody might actually take it upon themselves to prevent
one of those acts of terrorism from occurring. Yeah, I
(27:42):
don't know that anybody could stop McVeigh. I'm sure if
I went back and study the timeline of every action
he took, that there were probably some signals where people
could have recognized, oh, there's something kind of suspicious going
on here, and perhaps could have intervened and stopped him.
But there's certainly was on nine to eleven. There certainly
was in nineteen ninety three in the First World Trade
(28:05):
Center bombing. But go back to September eleventh, two thousand
and one. Flight ninety three showed us that, even at
their own peril, that they could stop those hijackers from
flying that plane into either the White House or the Capitol.
(28:28):
Speculation is it was actually for the Capitol Building because
it was a much larger target than the White House,
and they were able to stop it on their own.
American citizens acting on their own were able to stop
those hijackers. And then we went, duh, why don't we
secure the cockpit door? Let me ask you a question.
(28:50):
You're on a commercial flight point A to point B.
I don't care what it is. Somebody rushes the cockpit door.
What do you do? Do you just blithely sit there? Well, sizzam,
somebody's trying to hijack the plane. No, we've now learned
(29:13):
what the end game is. And now that we know
what the endgame is, there are surely Americans who would
take it upon themselves to stop somebody from hijacking a
plane and flying it into a building, even at their
own peril, to save the people in the building, they
would sacrifice their own lives, as we witnessed on United
(29:35):
Flight ninety three. So why do we continue to just
allow this security state to expand and expand and expand.
And my theory is quite simple because much like we
have abdicated much of our compassion to the government go
take care of all these horrible social ills, so have
(29:55):
we abdicated both businesses and individuals have abdicated their own
personal security and safety to the government. Now that's not
to say the government doesn't have a role, because I
believe they do have a role. But where do we
draw the line taking off our shoes, three point four
(30:16):
ounces of liquid, having your body scanned, having all your
personal belongings gone through, showing your ID when illegal aliens
are not required to show an ID. I mean, the
whole mishmash of the security state is absolutely infuriating to me,
(30:37):
and in many ways we have ourselves to blame. So
the weekend with Michael Brown text the word Mike or Michael,
the number three three one zero three. Go follow me
on X at Michael Brown USA. I'll be right back. Hey,
welcome back to the weekend with Michael Brown. Glad to
(30:57):
have you with me. I appreciate you tuning in. If
you send me a text message the number three three
one zero three keyword Mike or Michael, go follow me
on exits at Michael Brown USA. So we're reflecting and
thinking ahead. We're reflecting on the bombing of the Alphrope
Murrah building in Oklahoma City thirty years ago today on
(31:20):
this date, versus the security state that we now live
in because going back to that undergraduate class in terrorism,
everything that this professor talked to us about about how
the natural reaction of any government is to overreact and
(31:41):
to put in places because as many of you know
who have listened to me over the years, one of
my most despicable phrases that drives me up the wall
is we're going to do X so that whatever Y
was never happens again, when we know, indeed that it's
always going to happen again. Because living in liberty and
(32:01):
freedom is dangerous and it's chaotic, and it's messy, and
sometimes it's deadly. But what we have done is we
have shifted the responsibility for almost all of our security
to government at all levels. You know, there is no requirement.
(32:22):
The Supreme Court has ruled in the Castle Rock case
that law enforcement does not owe you a duty to
protect you from criminals. The same logic in that case
can be applied to terrorism. The government does not have
a duty to protect you from terrorism. And why would
(32:42):
that be Because there's no way you can do that
without eviscerating the Constitution, without eviscerating your Fourth Amendment rights,
without eviscerating your Second Amendment rights, without eviscerating your fifth
of First Amendment rights. But yet that's what I think
many people want us to do. And so when I
think of those children, when I think of my Sunday
(33:05):
school teacher, I have a listener in Oklahoma who lost
a special agent in that building on that day. When
I think of all of those people, what would they
have us do? They would have us pause and say,
wait a minute, don't we bear some responsibility ourselves for
(33:26):
our own safety and security, don't we? People are afraid
of guns, whether they're handguns or long guns. People are
afraid of their own shadows. People are afraid. You know,
people relish the idea of the kabuki security that TSA provides.
How do I know it's kabuki security? While I was
(33:49):
in Chicago, somebody at O'Hare forgot that they had a
gun in their backpack. It goes through the checkpoint and
they reach in and grab the bag when they realize
what they've done, and they make it all the way
to a plane. And I watch video, hilarious video, sickening
(34:09):
video too. And I'm not advocating that they be armed,
and in fact, I absolutely oppose them being armed. But
I'm watching TSA employees running through O'Hare International Airport trying
to find the gate where this person went, And I'm thinking,
(34:30):
if this guy was really a terrorist, if this guy
was really meant on killing somebody, what do you do?
First of all, he's at a gate, he could be
killing any number of people. And it's because what you
hesitated for a moment before you recognize, oh, that kind
of looks like the shape of a gun. Well is
(34:53):
that a Is that a banana in your pocket? Are
you just happy to see me? And he goes through
and they push everybody up against the concourse walls, while
they go running through the airport unarmed, and I'm thinking
of how stupid, how stupid can you be? Now, I
think about the crowds gathering through to go through the
security checkpoints, taking the shoes and their belts off, and
(35:16):
doing everything else. People throwing away Oh my gosh, you
have a bottle of water that could be something to
make a bomb with. Here, let's just take it and
throw it in the trash can right here next to
these crowds of people. When you think through the logic
of what we're doing, it's absolutely it's utter insanity, and
(35:37):
we accept that insanity because we don't want to take
any responsibilities for ourselves. I have often said I don't
know whether I've said it to this national audience or not,
but I really don't give a ratsass if he were
still alive, if Osama bin Lauden was sitting on the
plane next to me, not that I want to be
friends with him, not that I don't want chat with
(35:59):
anybody in the air playing. Frankly, all I care about
is that the person next to me doesn't have a gun,
a bomb or a knife. Oh I know, they've got
ink pens so they can stab me. In the jugular
that you can take my crodit artery and open it
up pretty quickly, and I'd bleed out pretty fast. You see.
It's when you think through all of these things you
(36:24):
reach the conclusion that what we're doing is really absurd,
and there's no way to fully protect anybody or everybody
from all the dangers of living in a free and
open society. So why don't we learn to live in
a free and open society. Why don't we learn to
take some responsibilities ourselves. Why don't we realize that those
(36:44):
of us who happen to be gun owners, we're not
out looking, actively looking to be able to kill somebody
in self defense. In fact, we would prefer not to
have to do that. We just want to be prepared.
So if we're in the position where we have no
choice but to do that, we can exercise that right.
(37:05):
And all this crap about your the new I D.
Oh my gosh, you've got to have your I D ready.
We're utterly insane. God bless those victims
Too night.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Michael Brown joins me here, the former FEMA director of talk.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Show host Michael Brown.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Brownie, no, Brownie, You're doing a heck of a job.
The Weekend with Michael Brown broadcasting live from Denver, Colorado.
It's the Beacon with Michael Brown. Happy to have you
joining me. The prog in the program today. Rules of
engagement are pretty easy. You're gonna send me a text message.
That's real easy. On your message app the numbers three
three one zero three, three three one zero three. Just
(00:25):
use the keyword Mike or Michael. Tell me anything, Ask
me anything. And while you're at it, go over to
x formerly Twitter and give me a follow over there.
It's at Michael Brown USA, at Michael Brown USA. When
I was undergraduate school and I was I took a
double major in political science and public administration. One of
(00:48):
my political science professors taught a course called terrorism. That
was it just terrorism, and it was it was. It
was a one semester course. It was a one thousand
level course. And I remember throughout the study of the
course of course, you got to remember this is back
(01:08):
in the dark ages, So most of the course work
and the textbook were focused on foreign actors, foreign events
of terrorism, mainly happening in Africa or the Middle East,
sometimes Southeast Asia. And I remember throughout the entire length
(01:33):
of the course thinking, what would we do as a
nation if acts of terrorism ever came to this country?
What kind of reaction would we have? What would Congress do,
what would whoever the president might be at that time,
what would they do? And what would that ultimately lead to.
(02:00):
Let's go back in time. Let's go back in time
just thirty years ago, thirty years ago today, April nineteen,
nineteen ninety five. I remember distinctly where I was. I
was in San Diego, California. I'd had a meeting the
night before. I was staying in a Marriott somewhere on
(02:20):
the water, and I had gotten up that morning and
was going downstairs to have breakfast, and as many hotels
to this day still do. In fact, I think it's
even more prominent now. You walk down a hallway, you're walking,
you know, through a lobby or wherever, and there are
television monitors up. And the television monitors might be, you know,
(02:43):
tuned to the weather channel or to a local channel,
might be tuned to C and In or whatever. Now
I remember walking by and looking up at the television
monitors and seeing this billowing of smoke from I did
a double take, and I looked and I went, oh,
that's downtown Oklahoma City. So I stopped and I watched
(03:05):
the coverage for a moment, and at first I thought,
and I don't remember, it's thirty years ago, but I
don't know whether someone was reporting this, or whether i'd
seen something on the video that was showing the live
coverage that was on at the time, because by that
time in the morning, West Coast, let's say I was
(03:26):
getting up at you know, I was going down to
breakfast at eight am. That means it would be almost
ten am, so the bombing was almost an hour old.
And so I don't know whether it was reporting or
it was old scenes or what it was. But I
remember thinking, Oh, someone's bomb the IRS building there used
(03:47):
to be. I don't know whether there still is, and
I don't remember it was on Broadway or one of
the other streets, one of the north South Archeries in
downtown Oclaoma City, but one of those streets had an
IRS building on it, and I thought, Oh, somebody's bomb
the IRS building. And I don't mean this flippantly, but
I thought to myself, well, I'm not surprised in my
(04:08):
bomb the Irs building. You know, there's some nut job
out there that's pissed off about his taxes. And I stopped.
And I don't know why, but I was mesmerized, primarily
because I grew up in Oklahoma and I used to
practice law in Oklahoma. And then I realized, Oh, it's
(04:29):
the Alfred P. Murrah Building, which is a federal building
that's adjacent to the Federal District Courthouse. And what caught
my attention was, oh, it's the Murrah Building. Because when
I would have any business in the Federal District Courthouse
the Western District of Oklahoma, located in downtown Oklahoma City,
(04:50):
there were when you would drive into the parking garage
of the Mura Building there was a row of free
public parking spaces. And so, as a lawyer that you know,
didn't have a lot of money trying to watch his
p's and q's on expenses, thought well, look I can
park here. I think the limit was four hours or something.
So if I was if all I was doing was
(05:11):
I had a maybe I had a hearing on a
motion or I had to file some documents or something.
I would park in that free parking spot in the
Murrah Building and then take a short tunnel just underneath
right across to the Federal Courthouse and go up the
elevators of the courthouse, go do my business, do whatever
it was. Come back and you know, pull out of
the Murror Building and you know, get back on the
(05:33):
expressway and head back to wherever I was going to
head to. And I thought, huh, that's interesting because the
Murror Building contains the ATF Department of Agriculture. I'll tell
you why. I remember the Department of Vague in particular,
the Department of Agriculture, the ATF. You know, they're just
(05:55):
all sorts of office buildings. Oklahoma City was not a
regional office. Like you know, FEMA has these ten distinct
regions around the country, and there is a regional headquarters
in which because of the FEMA map and the THEEMA
different regions, most other federal agencies locate in those regional headquarters.
(06:22):
So like Dallas is the regional headquarter for UH, I
think it's Region eight. I forget the region number. But
then you'll have satellite offices in major cities around the
state and in that region. And that was true for
Oklahoma City, just like you'd have an IRS building, you
(06:42):
had Department of Agon, you had ATF and you had
others in the Alfred P. Mura building. And the reason
that I kind of stopped and was mesmerized because when
they started showing the photos of the damage inflicted by
this what turned out to be a rider truck car bomb,
(07:04):
one of my Sunday school well, my my Sunday school
teacher when I was in grade school worked for the
Department of Bag in that building, and my sister in
law worked for an oil and gas company about a
block and half away, And so I remember taking my mobile,
(07:26):
you know, my big gass mobile phone that we had,
and trying to call uh. Her name is Joey, And
I remember trying to call Joey to see if I
could get a hold of Joey see what was going on.
And obviously, like you learn over time that when these
incidents occur, you really can't get a hold of anybody
(07:46):
because the cell phone towers are either jammed and they're overloaded,
or they're destroyed and they're inoperative, or whatever it might be.
But I remember I couldn't get through, and it was
my my first personal taste of an act of terrorism.
And little did I realize that something that had happened
(08:11):
a couple of years before, and then this act on
April nineteen, nineteen ninety five, and then what would happen
later on in two thousand and one, would come to
be an incredibly major part of my life. So for
a few moments this morning, or whenever you're listening, I
(08:34):
want to take a few moments just to recall a
few things that happened on April nineteen, nineteen ninety five
in downtown Oklahoma City. It's the Weekend with Michael Brown.
Text the word Micaro Michael to three three Wednesday, will
three go? Follow me on Exit's at Michael Brown Usa.
Hangtyp I'll be right back. Hey, welcome back to the
(08:59):
Weekend with Mychael Brown. Glad to have you with let me.
I appreciate you tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe to
the podcast on your podcast app search for this show,
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Once you find that, you click that subscribe button and
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(09:21):
weekend program, which means you'll get all six days of
Michael Brown. So back to Oklahoma City, April nineteen, nineteen
ninety five, two years after the first World Trade Center bombing,
which we'll get to in amendment. But the coverage was
(09:41):
fairly standard.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
I'm Tammy pay the TV and I Newsuan. If you
are anywhere downtown, you probably heard it and felt it.
An explosion of some kind downtown Oklahoma City. Take a
look at this picture. This is our tower cam shot,
a plume of smoke rising in the air. I was
on the phone with that one of the fire chiefs,
John Hanson, just moments ago. We were talking. He said, Wow,
(10:04):
there's been some kind of explosion in downtown Oklahoma City.
The minute he said that, we felt what I guess
is some type of aftershock, maybe a second explosion that
we felt all the way here at Wiltshire and Kelly
at news line nine. This is a live picture right
now downtown at Oklahoma City. Robin and you got some
more information saying that it was near the YMCA and
(10:26):
apparently there.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Are numerous injuries.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
That initial reports numerous injuries. These are initial reports. Coming
into news Line nine, I get a live picture tower
cam downtown Oklahoma City. It is our understanding the explosion
was near the YMCA. Now we're going to stay with
you here for a few moments, maybe from Martha City Hall,
(10:49):
also near the Federal Court Building. We're trying to give
you some idea of where the explosion took place.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
He knows. It's really no different than what happens today,
the first initial reports. No one really knows what's happened.
Yet it's now wall toa wall coverage. It could have
been a natural gas explosion. In fact, at some point
there was a speculation that may have been a natural
gas explosion. But it becomes walla wall coverage because you
(11:18):
have a huge pluma smoke coming from a downtown central
business district. Nobody knows what's going on, And of course
you know that in the minds of all the news
people and of course the first responders who are already
on the scene, that something really horrible has happened. We
just don't realize how horrible it is. We just don't realize.
(11:43):
Even as I sat in San Diego watching the news
coverage on one of the cable channels, in a Marriott
Hotel that I didn't fully comprehend everything that had happened
at that point.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
You have family and friends if you work in downtown
Oklahoma City. This is downtown Oklahoma City, near at the
Federal Court Building, also near the YMCA. This is a
live picture tower CAM twenty south half to downtown Oklahoma City.
And if you're just joining us again house speaking with
John Hanson, it was incredible. He said there has been
(12:17):
some kind of explosion in downtown Oklahoma City. He had
no details of what. You can imagine how quick he hung.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
The bombing happened around nine oh two am. This particular
live coverage that you're hearing the archive of is at
nine oh six thirty four am, so four minutes after
the bombing. They've gone wall to wall coverage and no
one yet really fully understands what's taking place.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
As soon as he hung up, we felt here at
news Line nine the building shake and we heard a
very loud explosion. We don't know if it's gas, We
don't know what it is. We do know there's a
plymouth smoke to the air, and we're going to stay
with you here to talk you through this as we
get information on injuries and exactly where this explosion took place.
(13:13):
Here's some more information we're getting. The explosion was so powerful,
gas or glass was blown out of buildings in a
free block area. Now you can imagine what the scanners
sound like here. You can probably hear them. Emergency vehicles
of every kind are responding. It was felt as far
away as an Edmund. You know, this is a live
(13:35):
picture tower can in downtown Oklahoma City, del City, del
City felt, Edmund felt it.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
And again here at news you hear the reporters in
the background trying to gather information to try to let
people know what's going on. And as you watch the video,
as it's true, whenever these things happen, people are still
driving up in the freeways. There are obviously lots of
helicopters in the sky. You can see planes in the
(14:06):
background that are landing out at Will Rogers International Airport.
So you see that life goes on while everyone else
is trying to focus on what happened in that very
small area of downtown Oklahoma City. I mean, it affected
virtually a very wide area in downtown, but the bombing
(14:31):
itself half a block, just half a block, and it's
one of the first indications that we have that the
country's going to change, that things are going to be different,
and that suddenly what we take to be granted that
(14:51):
acts of terrorism are something that occur somewhere else that
don't affect us, are now going to affect us and
affect us in ways we can't even possibly imagine. In
my looking through to try to find just kind of
relevant sound bites about the bombing, I ran across this.
(15:17):
The voice should be familiar to you. It's then Congressman
Chuck Schumer now Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer from New York.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
By Terrorism bill making lethal terrorism a crime punishable by death,
it would.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Make it a lot easier to deport non citizens who
are here and possibly doing terroristic acts. And finally, it
would not allow them to come here and raise money
for terroristic purposes.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
It didn't take long.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Wow, they're Senator Schumer talking about an act of terrorism
and claiming that, you know, his legislation would prevent people
from I'm coming to this country illegally in order to
raise money to engage in acts of terrorism, and that
those who are here should be deported, shouldn't be around
(16:13):
do you think Chuck Schumer would say that today, because
today we have Congressmen and senators, well, in particular, we
have a US Senator from Maryland that's actually traveling to
l Salvador to sit down with a member of MS thirteen,
a gang that you may not define it as domestic
(16:35):
terrorism in the sense that it's for it, because it's
not for a political purpose. Although I think that when
you're engaged in a national conspiracy, an organizational conspiracy, to
engage in criminal activity, to engage in some of the
most brutal criminal acts, you can possibly imagine that that's
(16:58):
inflicting terror upon those victims and inflicting terror upon those
communities in which MS thirteen operates, which was originally started
in well, started in El Salvador, but originally landed in
Los Angeles, but ironically operates also predominantly in Maryland, where
(17:20):
Senator Van Holland is from. So that's his constituency, that's
who he's going to see.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
So this whole.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Terrorism thing has turned the world upside down inside out,
and in this country, despite the incredible loss of life
that we had on in nineteen ninety three in the
World Trade Center bombing, that we had in nineteen ninety
five in the Alfred P. Murra bombing, and that we
had in the attacks of September eleventh, two thousand and one.
(17:57):
We don't take or at least some people don't take
you illegal immigration seriously. I find that astonishing. It's a
Weekend with Michael Brown. Text the word Michael, Michael the
three three, one zero three. I'll be right back tonight.
(18:18):
Michael Brown joins me here.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
The former FEMA director of talk show host Michael Brown. Brownie, no, Brownie,
You're doing a heck of a job the Weekend with
Michael Brown.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Hey, welcome back to the Weekend with Michael Brown. Glad
to have you with me. I appreciate you tuning in.
By the way, Happy Easter everyone, Hope everyone has a
wonderful Easter. So we're talking about the Alfred P. Murrah bombing,
how that had a personal effect on me, having been
(18:47):
in that building hundreds, probably not thousands of times, and
having lost a dear friend in that building. Well, let's
back up. Let's go to February twenty six, nineteen ninety three,
because we have to remember this history to understand how
we've gotten to where we are today. On February twenty sixth,
(19:10):
nineteen ninety three, a van loaded with I think more
than one thousand pounds of a urea nitrate bomb similar
to the bomb used by Timothy McVeigh headed for downtown Manhattan,
and the destination for those bombers Romsey Yusef and his
(19:32):
group of terrorists was the World Trade Center and their
mission on that day was to destroy the twin towers.
They parked a level B to the garage below the towers,
lit the bomb's fuse, and escaped in a getaway car,
and at twelve eighteen PM on that cold day in February,
(19:54):
the bomb detonated. The explosion left a whole about one
hundred and fifty feet wide several stories deep underneath the
North Tower. People on the top of the towers and
in surrounding buildings could feel the force of the explosions.
Sounds almost exactly like what we had thought we witnessed
just two years later, one foreign, one domestic with the
(20:18):
menace of that bombing. In February of nineteen ninety three,
the FBIS joined Terrorism Task Force when they're investigators suspected
acts of terrorism, and two days after the attack, investigators
recovered several vehicle fragments from the parking garage of WTC,
(20:39):
and unlike the other fragments that they found, those pieces
indicated that they were from a vehicle that had exploded outward.
So clearly Carbamb you may have recalled in that SoundBite
that I was playing in the last segment from the
live coverage in downtown Oklahoma City, speculation quickly turned to
(21:00):
another car bomb because of an eight foot crater. And
then when you see when they were finally able to
get helicopters close enough through the smoke, you could see
that the front one third of the building, in kind
of a concave shape, had also been blown away, and
then the remaining parts of the building interior began to collapse.
(21:23):
And don't forget all those children that were killed. They
were in the daycare center on the first floor. If
anybody ever deserved the death penalty, it was Timothy McVeigh.
My opinion is Terry Nichols deserved it also as his partner.
But I think he's still alive down in Supermax here
(21:45):
in Colorado. McVeigh, he's gone on to meet us. Maker.
If you ever have a chance to get a clambas
City and you have a chance to visit the National
Memorial on the grounds of where the Murrah buildings stood
in downtown Oklamas City, I highly recommend that you do that,
(22:06):
And much like I recommend people watch or see the
monuments in Washington at night, I highly recommend that you
go to the National Memorial in downtown Oclaomas City at night.
You'll see the rows of chairs, nine rows representing the
nine floors of the building, and the chairs from the
(22:33):
tallest adult size all the way down to tiny, tiny
little chairs on the front row representing the murdered children,
all lit by a light underneath that glows on the chairs,
(22:54):
and of course the memorial tree, the living tree that's
still there that survived the bomb. It's worth it's worth
a trip, but it's also worth your time reflecting, and
it's worth your time if you ever make it to
to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, or you ever have a chance to
(23:18):
go to the World Trade Center Memorial in Lower Manhattan.
Is to reflect on how these incidents of terrorism have
fundamentally altered this country and turned us virtually into a
security state. As my local audience knows, I was in
(23:39):
Chicago for a couple of days this week, and of
course I have my usual encounter with TSA, although I
didn't you know, no no problems this time. You know,
I was a good boy. I went the extra mile
to make sure that nothing was going to beep, and
I also used clear. I used clear. Plus I have
TSA PreCheck. But think about just think about that. So
(24:05):
here is a citizen of the United States of America,
a law abiding citizen that, through two organizations, a private
and a governmental organization, go through to get cleared to
fly on an airplane. And the purpose is to make
(24:28):
certain that I don't carry anything on board to hijack
the plane, or to fly it into a tower, or
fly it into the ground. And so we see this,
these just throngs of people, which I'm always fascinated by,
because if Terris really wanted to do mass murder, although
(24:49):
it would not be it, well, maybe in some ways
it would be as dramatic as a plane crashing into
a tower. Denver International Airport is the third busiest airport
in the country. It's the sixth busiest airport in the world,
and on busy days, the crowds, the thousands of people
(25:10):
that are lined up to go through magnetometers, X rays,
body scanners, everything you can imagine, taking their shoes off,
taking their belts off, taking their watches off, throwing their
hands up in the air as if they're being searched,
you know, because they're they're criminals of some sort going
through so simply so they can exercise their First Amendment
right of association by traveling to wherever they're going for
(25:33):
a business meeting or see Grandma, or to see whatever
it is, we have subjected ourselves to a security state
I go, you know, I don't. Actually I pay for
my global entry because I travel internationally, so I want
to be able to skip the all of the customs
(25:54):
and border patrol interrogations and entry. So I pay for
global entry, which requires as an in person interview, providing
all the documentation about who I am, which gives me
automatically tsa pre check. And I also use clear of
a private company that also does biometrics and pre screening
(26:14):
and everything else, so that I can expedite, simply expedite
my way through security, and people just accept it. Why
do we do that? Well, because many people just like we.
I often talk about how we abdicate our compassion to
(26:36):
the government. Oh there's somebody homeless, Well, we want the
government to take care of that. Oh there's somebody hungry,
we want the government to take care of that. Oh
there's somebody who's poor, we want the government to take
care of that. Well, in the same vein, Oh here's
a danger. And the danger at one time was somebody
(26:57):
might take a plane, and well we always somebody might
take a plane in highjacket and fly to Havana and
try to collect some sort of ransom and then disappear.
Of course, Fidel Castro at the time would take the
money and then, you know, throw the other person in prison,
and so Castro made some money, he has a prisoner,
and people get their plane back and life goes on.
(27:21):
But we couldn't imagine that somebody could fly a plane
into a tower, and we couldn't imagine that the World
Trade Center might be a target, and we couldn't imagine
that somebody might actually take it upon themselves to prevent
one of those acts of terrorism from occurring. Yeah, I
(27:42):
don't know that anybody could stop McVeigh. I'm sure if
I went back and study the timeline of every action
he took, that there were probably some signals where people
could have recognized, oh, there's something kind of suspicious going
on here, and perhaps could have intervened and stopped him.
But there's certainly was on nine to eleven. There certainly
was in nineteen ninety three in the First World Trade
(28:05):
Center bombing. But go back to September eleventh, two thousand
and one. Flight ninety three showed us that, even at
their own peril, that they could stop those hijackers from
flying that plane into either the White House or the Capitol.
(28:28):
Speculation is it was actually for the Capitol Building because
it was a much larger target than the White House,
and they were able to stop it on their own.
American citizens acting on their own were able to stop
those hijackers. And then we went, duh, why don't we
secure the cockpit door? Let me ask you a question.
(28:50):
You're on a commercial flight point A to point B.
I don't care what it is. Somebody rushes the cockpit door.
What do you do? Do you just blithely sit there? Well, sizzam,
somebody's trying to hijack the plane. No, we've now learned
(29:13):
what the end game is. And now that we know
what the endgame is, there are surely Americans who would
take it upon themselves to stop somebody from hijacking a
plane and flying it into a building, even at their
own peril, to save the people in the building, they
would sacrifice their own lives, as we witnessed on United
(29:35):
Flight ninety three. So why do we continue to just
allow this security state to expand and expand and expand.
And my theory is quite simple because much like we
have abdicated much of our compassion to the government go
take care of all these horrible social ills, so have
(29:55):
we abdicated both businesses and individuals have abdicated their own
personal security and safety to the government. Now that's not
to say the government doesn't have a role, because I
believe they do have a role. But where do we
draw the line taking off our shoes, three point four
(30:16):
ounces of liquid, having your body scanned, having all your
personal belongings gone through, showing your ID when illegal aliens
are not required to show an ID. I mean, the
whole mishmash of the security state is absolutely infuriating to me,
(30:37):
and in many ways we have ourselves to blame. So
the weekend with Michael Brown text the word Mike or Michael,
the number three three one zero three. Go follow me
on X at Michael Brown USA. I'll be right back. Hey,
welcome back to the weekend with Michael Brown. Glad to
(30:57):
have you with me. I appreciate you tuning in. If
you send me a text message the number three three
one zero three keyword Mike or Michael, go follow me
on exits at Michael Brown USA. So we're reflecting and
thinking ahead. We're reflecting on the bombing of the Alphrope
Murrah building in Oklahoma City thirty years ago today on
(31:20):
this date, versus the security state that we now live
in because going back to that undergraduate class in terrorism,
everything that this professor talked to us about about how
the natural reaction of any government is to overreact and
(31:41):
to put in places because as many of you know
who have listened to me over the years, one of
my most despicable phrases that drives me up the wall
is we're going to do X so that whatever Y
was never happens again, when we know, indeed that it's
always going to happen again. Because living in liberty and
(32:01):
freedom is dangerous and it's chaotic, and it's messy, and
sometimes it's deadly. But what we have done is we
have shifted the responsibility for almost all of our security
to government at all levels. You know, there is no requirement.
(32:22):
The Supreme Court has ruled in the Castle Rock case
that law enforcement does not owe you a duty to
protect you from criminals. The same logic in that case
can be applied to terrorism. The government does not have
a duty to protect you from terrorism. And why would
(32:42):
that be Because there's no way you can do that
without eviscerating the Constitution, without eviscerating your Fourth Amendment rights,
without eviscerating your Second Amendment rights, without eviscerating your fifth
of First Amendment rights. But yet that's what I think
many people want us to do. And so when I
think of those children, when I think of my Sunday
(33:05):
school teacher, I have a listener in Oklahoma who lost
a special agent in that building on that day. When
I think of all of those people, what would they
have us do? They would have us pause and say,
wait a minute, don't we bear some responsibility ourselves for
(33:26):
our own safety and security, don't we? People are afraid
of guns, whether they're handguns or long guns. People are
afraid of their own shadows. People are afraid. You know,
people relish the idea of the kabuki security that TSA provides.
How do I know it's kabuki security? While I was
(33:49):
in Chicago, somebody at O'Hare forgot that they had a
gun in their backpack. It goes through the checkpoint and
they reach in and grab the bag when they realize
what they've done, and they make it all the way
to a plane. And I watch video, hilarious video, sickening
(34:09):
video too. And I'm not advocating that they be armed,
and in fact, I absolutely oppose them being armed. But
I'm watching TSA employees running through O'Hare International Airport trying
to find the gate where this person went, And I'm thinking,
(34:30):
if this guy was really a terrorist, if this guy
was really meant on killing somebody, what do you do?
First of all, he's at a gate, he could be
killing any number of people. And it's because what you
hesitated for a moment before you recognize, oh, that kind
of looks like the shape of a gun. Well is
(34:53):
that a Is that a banana in your pocket? Are
you just happy to see me? And he goes through
and they push everybody up against the concourse walls, while
they go running through the airport unarmed, and I'm thinking
of how stupid, how stupid can you be? Now, I
think about the crowds gathering through to go through the
security checkpoints, taking the shoes and their belts off, and
(35:16):
doing everything else. People throwing away Oh my gosh, you
have a bottle of water that could be something to
make a bomb with. Here, let's just take it and
throw it in the trash can right here next to
these crowds of people. When you think through the logic
of what we're doing, it's absolutely it's utter insanity, and
(35:37):
we accept that insanity because we don't want to take
any responsibilities for ourselves. I have often said I don't
know whether I've said it to this national audience or not,
but I really don't give a ratsass if he were
still alive, if Osama bin Lauden was sitting on the
plane next to me, not that I want to be
friends with him, not that I don't want chat with
(35:59):
anybody in the air playing. Frankly, all I care about
is that the person next to me doesn't have a gun,
a bomb or a knife. Oh I know, they've got
ink pens so they can stab me. In the jugular
that you can take my crodit artery and open it
up pretty quickly, and I'd bleed out pretty fast. You see.
It's when you think through all of these things you
(36:24):
reach the conclusion that what we're doing is really absurd,
and there's no way to fully protect anybody or everybody
from all the dangers of living in a free and
open society. So why don't we learn to live in
a free and open society. Why don't we learn to
take some responsibilities ourselves. Why don't we realize that those
(36:44):
of us who happen to be gun owners, we're not
out looking, actively looking to be able to kill somebody
in self defense. In fact, we would prefer not to
have to do that. We just want to be prepared.
So if we're in the position where we have no
choice but to do that, we can exercise that right.
(37:05):
And all this crap about your the new I D.
Oh my gosh, you've got to have your I D ready.
We're utterly insane. God bless those victims
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